Since lighttpd 1.4.50, this URL normalization is available with server.http-parseopts <https://redmine.lighttpd.net/projects/lighttpd/wiki/Server_http-parseoptsDetails&gt;. The lighttpd default will become server.http-parseopts = ("url-normalize-unreserved" => "enable", "url-path-2f-decode" => "enable") unless server.http-parseopts is explicitly set in the lighttpd config. Enabling URL normalization by default will provide more consistent behavior for mod_redirect and mod_rewrite, which match against the (url-encoded) URL request. However, decoding %2F by default, while generally desirable for consistency, is potentially a breaking change for those encoding URLs in the url-path and relying on the literal '/' as a delimiter. For those uses, "url-path-2f-decode" => "disable" will need to be explicitly set in the lighttpd config.